Lorca

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Twelve Songs by Lorca
Poems from the Spanish
By Jason Francisco

Blind Panorama of New York

If these are not birds
covered with ashes,
if these are not laments wailing at the windows of the wedding,
they will be delicate creatures of the air,
springing new blood in inextinguishable dimness.
But no, these are not birds,
because birds are on the verge of being plow animals.
These might be white rocks, with the help of the moon—
and are always wounded youth, before the judges lift the cloth.

Everyone understands sorrow sprung from death,
but real grief is not present, even in spirit—
not in the air or in our life here,
in these terraces filled with smoke.
The honest sadness that maintains a wakefulness to things
is a small burnt infinity
in the innocent eyes of other systems.

An abandoned gown weighs heavily on our shoulders,
so much that the sky gathers us into tipping flocks.
Those who die in childbirth know in the final hour
that all rumor will be stone and all trace, howl.
As for us, we don’t know that thinking takes hold in the outskirts,
where the philosopher is devoured by mandarins and caterpillars.
And some idiot children find the opposite in kitchens—
small swallows, on crutches,
that know the pronunciation of the word love.

No, these are not birds.
It’s not a bird that relays the confusing, swampy fever,
or the anxiety of the assassin that oppresses us each moment,
or the metallic report of suicide that quickens us each morning.
The place where the whole world afflicts us is a capsule of air,
a small space alive to the manic unity of light,
an indeterminate scale where clouds and roses forget
the foreign wailing that boils through docks of blood.
Many times I have lost myself
looking for that burning that sustains a wakefulness to things,
and have found only seafarers hung over the railings,
and small creatures of the sky buried under snow.
The honest sadness was over there, in the village squares
where crystallized fish were dying under tree trunks,
in the courtyards of a sky unknown to ancient island statues—
and their tender, volcanic intimacy.

There is no sadness in the voice. All that exists is teeth,
but teeth that will silence isolation with black satin.
There is no sadness in the voice. Here only earth exists—
the land, with its gates of perpetuity,
giving the blush of its fruits.

The Passing of the Siguiriya

Between black butterflies
goes a dark girl
with a white serpent
of mist.

Dirt of light,
sky of dirt.

She goes in chains to the tremor
of a rhythm never arriving;
she has a silver heart
and a dagger in her right hand.

Anguished song with the headless rhythm,
where are you going?
What moon will keep your sorrow
of plaster and oleander?

Dirt of light,
sky of dirt.

Evocation

Dry land,
calm land
of immense
nights.

(Wind in the olive grove,
wind in the sierra.)

Old
land
of oil lamp
and pain.
Land
of deep cisterns.
Land
of eyeless death
and arrows.

(Wind through the roads.
Breeze in the poplar groves.)

And After

The labyrinths
that time creates
vanish.

(Only desert
remains.)

The heart,
fountain of desire,
vanishes.

(Only desert
remains.)

The illusion of dawn
and kisses
vanishes.

Only desert
remains.
An undulated
desert.

The Cry

The ellipse of a cry
goes from mount
to mount.

From the olive trees it becomes
a black iris arc
on the blue night.

Ay!

Like the viola’s bow,
the cry vibrates
hanging cords of wind.

Ay!

(The peoples of the caves
show their lamps.)

Ay!

Dagger

The dagger
enters the heart
like the grate of a plow
into the desert.

No.
Don't drive it into me.
No.

The dagger,
like a spoke of the sun,
sets the terrible lowlands
flaming.

No.
Don't drive it into me.
No.

The Solea

Gowned in black mantles,
she thinks the world small
and the heart immense.

Gowned in black mantles.

She thinks the tender breath
and the cry disappear
in the current of wind.

Gowned in black mantles.

The balcony was left open, abandoned,
and the dawn disembarked
the entire sky.

Ay, yayayayay,
so gowned in black mantles!

Sevilla

Sevilla is a tower
filled with five archers.

Sevilla to wound,
Cordoba to die.

A city waiting,
twisting long rhythms
like labyrinths,
like enflamed
grapevine shoots.

Sevilla to wound!

Beneath the arc of its sky,
above its clear plain,
its river hurls
a constant dart.

Cordoba to die!

And crazed in the horizon,
it mixes wine with the bitterness of Don Juan,
and the perfection of Dionysius.

Sevilla to wound!
Forever Sevilla to wound!

Death of the Petenera

In the white house,
human perdition dies.

A hundred ponies twist like the nautilus.
Their riders are dead.

Beyond the shaking stars
of the lamps,
her moire skirt trembles
between her copper thighs.

A hundred ponies twist like the nautilus.
Their riders are dead.

Long, sharp shadows cross
the turbid horizon,
and the burden of a guitar
breaks.

A hundred ponies twist like the nautilus.
Their riders are dead.

Saeta

Dark Christ
passes
from Lily of Judea
to Carnation of Spain.

Look where he comes from!

From Spain, clean and dark sky,
browned earth,
and riverbeds where water runs
so slowly.
Dark Christ,
with burnt shocks of hair,
cheekbones projected
and white pupils.

Look where he's going!

Town

Upon the razed mount,
a calvary,
clear water
and a hundred year old olive tree.
Through the alleys,
muffled men,
and in the towers,
weathercocks gyrating.

Eternally
gyrating.

Oh lost town
in the Andalucia of tears!

Little Ballad of the Three Rivers

The river Guadalquivir
goes between olives and oranges.
The two rivers of Granada,
descend from the snow to the wheat.

Ay, love,
that left without coming!

The river Guadalquivir
has garnet whiskers.
The two rivers of Granada,
one weeping and the other blood.

Ay, love,
that left through the air!

For boats with sails
Sevilla has a passage.
Through the waters of Granada
only sighs row around.

Ay, love,
that left without coming!

Guadalquivir, high tower
and wind in the orange groves.
Darro and Genil, little towers
dead over the ponds.

Ay, love,
that left through the air!

Who will say that the water carries away
a will-o-the-wisp of cries!

Ay, love,
that left without coming!

Carry orange blossom, carry olives,
Andalucia, to your seas!

Ay, love,
that left through the air!